Beating Heart Cadavers (25 page)

Ch. 34

Caine stood on what was left of the grass outside listening to the sound of dirt being tossed up to his side. Fields was somewhere below him, standing in the crater-sized hole that was now in his mother's garden, as she continued to dig in search of Andor's body. For someone so tired, Caine thought, she worked rather quickly.

The shovel crunched against something solid and Fields paused.

“What was that?” Caine asked.

“Sounds like a bone. Move the light over.”

Caine made a face and shined the flashlight over where she stood. He hadn't particularly liked burying Andor in the first place, and he certainly didn't like digging him up now. The light flooded over Fields' form and she moved to the side to see what was beneath her feet. Sure enough, the hint of white bones was gleaming up from the brown dirt.

“Lovely,” Caine said dryly.

“Feel free to hop down and help me look for the key – since you're the one who remembers what it looks like.”

“I don't think there's enough space for the two of us,” Caine returned. “Besides, can't we just run a magnet over it? Let it come to us rather than … fish around in his remains?”

“Hilitum isn't magnetic, Matt. And if you're not going to help, at least take the shovel.”

Caine did as he was told and reached forward to grab it from her. He continued to shine the light over her work area, crinkling up his nose as she pawed around in the flesh-less bones and remains of the dirty rags that they had used to mop up the blood.

“Is this it?”

She straightened and held something up for him to see. Squinting, he peered at the shape of something sharp and metallic and then nodded his head.

“Looks like it. Toss it up.”

He caught it and pocketed it in his uniform before reaching down to heave her out of the hole. As her boots dug into the softened dirt and she clambered back up to ground level, though, a separate noise sounded in the distance, and they both paused.

“What was that?” Caine asked. “A coyote?”

Fields turned her head to the side, listening intently through the stillness.

“There're no coyotes this far in the city,” she said. “Besides, it sounded like it came from the house.”

She squinted across the yard to look at the house as though something might have been visible inside the darkened rooms. Caine was about to tell her that seeing anything through such heavy nightfall would be impossible, but stopped abruptly. A light had gone on in the front hall of the estate. Fields stepped in front of him to get a closer look.

“Are you expecting visitors?”

“I … Well, the government's been telling me I have to leave the house now that I'm not the ambassador.”

“They're not evicting you at three in the morning, Matt,” Fields said.

She crossed her arms as she surveyed the newly lit room, waiting for something to happen. As Caine peered over her shoulder, something flickered within the house as though a ripple had gone over the room, but it was indiscernible. Fields' shoulders stiffened.

“Did you see that?”

“Not really,” Caine replied. “It might just be the light. Faulty wiring or something –”

“Something moved in the living room,” Fields said, cutting him off. “A person.”

“There's no one there, Lad. It was just a trick of the light. The bulb's probably acting up –”

“It's not a light-bulb. It's a Spöke. I could see his face and hands even if his uniform was reflecting its surroundings.”

She reached into her pocket for something as Caine shifted in his spot behind her.

“Good thing we're outside, then,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder at the huge yard, trying to determine what the best route out would be. “Come on – let's get out here before they realize –”

Fields pulled out a knife and flicked open the blade. The sharp sound of metal pierced the air.

“We're going inside.”

“What? No – Lad –” Caine said, looking between the knife and the house, “– this is our chance to leave. They don't know we're out here –”

“Which will make it easier to surprise them,” Fields said. “Here – take my knife.”

She held it out for him, but he backed away.

“I'm not taking anything!” he hissed. “Lad, there's no reason for us to stay here. We've got the key already. Let's just go up to Hasenkamp like you said –”

“No, let's get rid of the Spöken – however many are here, at least – like
you
said.”

“I meant that we could form a plan to get rid of them diplomatically,” Caine returned indignantly. He glanced over at the house again. More lights were going on as they spoke, lining the house in squares of yellowish-white. “Going after them now would be suicide – and I want to see my son!”

“Your son would be dead if the Spökes in there had had it their way,” Fields said. “And Mason
is
dead because of them, so either take the knife and come in with me, or get to Hasenkamp yourself. I'm going inside.”

She indicated to the knife in her hand, but Caine was still hesitant.

“I can't just go in there and start stabbing Spökes,” he said. “I can't – I can't even make a pot of coffee.”

“Fine. You can have the gun, and I'll take the knife.” She pulled a gun from her pocket and pressed it into his hand. “You don't even have to get close to them.”

Caine wavered.

“Lad, I … I just don't think I can.”

Fields made a low sound in the base of her throat.

“You don't think you can kill the men who tried to butcher your son and bring him to you in a duffel bag?” she asked, crossing her arms as she considered it. “Or who killed Mason because he was trying to save someone's life?”

Caine gave a frustrated sigh.

“I know,” he said. “And I feel badly for what happened to Mason – I do. But ...”

“But what? He shouldn't have been helping a Mare-person?” Fields cocked her head at him, scrutinizing him in a way that he didn't like at all. “Is this what it's always going to come back to? You won't help people based on what their hearts are made out of?”

“No – this has nothing to do with helping or not helping them: they're not the ones who are here right now, Lad. We are. And I'm not going to defend them at risk of my own life and my son's future!”

“Maybe you should think of the life and future you'd have now, and who would be here with you, if you had defended the Mare-folk for all these years instead of the Spöken.”

Caine chewed the insides of his cheeks. He didn't want to argue with her, but he couldn't let her think that she was right, either.

“If Mason was here,” he said quietly, “then he wouldn't fight, and he wouldn't ask either of us to put ourselves in danger, either.”

“I know that,” Fields replied. “But I wasn't talking about him. I was talking about Mari.”

Caine's hand involuntarily went to the back of his neck to scratch furiously at his hairline, though he was aware that it was less out of anger at Fields for bringing the subject up and much more out of anger for himself.

“Mari – Mari wouldn't want –”

“Mari would've taken the knife and the gun from me and marched into the house five minutes ago,” Fields chided, and Caine didn't bother to argue: he knew that she was right. “And as much as you don't want to admit it, Mari would've taken a metal heart that was harvested in Hasenkamp, too, because she knew that it wouldn't have changed who she really was. She wanted to live, Matt. I asked her when I told her about the hearts. She wanted to live.”

Caine waved his hands in front of him as though to disperse the words into the air before they could hit him, but it did little good. He ran his fingers through his hair as he hunched his shoulders, turning away from her in the hopes that she wouldn't see his expression. Because if she had, he knew, then she would be able to read it, and she would know that he knew as well as she did that Mari had not only asked him to take her to Hasenkamp to get the heart, but that she had done so repeatedly from her deathbed even though he had initially refused, hoping to change his mind even in the last moments of her life when she had begged him to do it so that Simon wouldn't grow up without a mother.

“I didn't want to subject her to that,” he said, trying to find some hint of an excuse for what he had done. “It would've been – Oneris would've rejected her if she'd gotten the heart. They'd've taken Simon away forever, too –”

“Which is exactly what they did anyhow.”

“I know!” Caine shouted, raising his voice despite the Spökes that were moving around inside the house forty feet away. “I know, alright? You don't think I know what I've done – what I did? You don't think I feel – feel sick because of it? But I did it – I did all of it – because I loved her!”

“Did you?” Fields asked. She was frowning through the darkness, her sharp features just an outline in the distant lights. “Or did you do it for you – because you hate the Mare-folk?”

Caine faltered, his voice stammering in an incapability to speak. He wouldn't say that she was wrong if she wasn't, but he wouldn't admit that she could be right, either.

“I know you think that the Mare-folk are beating heart cadavers, and I know you think that Mari would've been one, too, but it's just not true, Matt,” Fields implored. “Having a metal heart, and having chemicals leach into your bloodstream and cross the blood-brain-barrier, and being sterilized means nothing. Your heart – metal or not – doesn't change who you are. It doesn't affect your soul. And right now, the only people whose souls are fucked are the ones marching around your house looking for you, not the ones who've been forced into hiding in Hasenkamp. Can't you see that?”

Caine shifted his jaw, trying to see her point but only capable of meeting her halfway. He knew who the Spöken really were now, and he had known it ever since receiving the bag with the decaying remains that he had clutched to his chest, pleading with the world to give him his son back to him, but the rest of what she hoped he would feel, and what Mason had felt so strongly about, wouldn't cut through, and in that moment he didn't think that it ever would. But what he did know was that if Ratsel had sent the Spöken to his house, he wasn't about to let any of them walk out again alive.

“I can see that the Spöken are the main problem right now,” he said. “So let's just … let's just get rid of the ones we can here, and then go to Hasenkamp and get Simon, alright?”

Fields' narrowed eyes slipped to the side, and though her jaw was clenched and set, it wasn't enough to hide her disappointment.

“Do you want the gun or the knife?” she asked tersely.

“The – the gun, I guess.” He took it from her, surprised at how heavy it felt in his hands, and couldn't imagine actually using it, though he knew that he would be even less capable of stabbing any of the Spökes through their silver-uniformed chests, either. “How do I fire it?”

“Tell me you're joking.”

“I'm an accountant!” he said in defense. “Do I just point and pull the trigger?”

She made a face and plucked it back from him.

“First of all, you hold it like this,” she said, demonstrating the proper placement of her hands on the weapon for him, “and make sure you keep your finger on the guard until you're about to shoot.”

She handed it back to him so that he could try, but quickly dodged to the side as he lifted it in front of him.

“–and don't
ever
point it at me,” she added through gritted teeth. “A lot of good it'll do you to shoot me before we even get in the house.”

“Right, sorry,” he said, quickly pointing it towards the ground. He gave her a sheepish smile. “Though on the bright side, at least there's a hole where I could stick your body if I accidentally hit you.”

“Very funny.” She ditched her heavy coat and switched open her knife again to prepare to go into the house. “But if it's not too much to ask, I don't want my eternal resting place to be with Andor – so you could at least bury me out front with the cherry trees.”

She started off towards the house, weaving through the darkness silently while he followed. The gun was still clutched at his side, and the closer that they got to the house, the less and less he thought that he would actually be able to use it.

“Do we have a plan?” he whispered outside the back door. Fields raised her eyebrows at him. “You know, a strategy or something?”

“Point and shoot anything that moves,” she replied. “Except for me.”

She ducked inside the house and out of sight. Caine sighed.

“Not really what I was hoping you'd say,” he muttered, but followed her inside nonetheless.

The house, though lit now, was eerily silent. Caine stepped through the vestibule gingerly, his muddied shoes squeaking ever so slightly on the wooden floors. Above him, the floorboards groaned as someone walked through the nursery where Simon had never had the chance to sleep.

A flutter went past the open doorway as someone passed through the smoking room, and Caine spun towards it, Fields' gun pointed and ready. He shuffled forward as quietly as he could and just made out the outline of the reflective Spöken uniform above which an auburn-haired head was situated. The Spöke had his back to him as he searched the room, giving Caine the perfect opportunity to shoot, but despite the gun being raised and ready, he couldn't fire.